Murder in the Trembling Lands
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- 15,99 €
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- 15,99 €
Publisher Description
Masked balls, duels and murder: musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January is caught up in a shocking crime in this gripping nineteenth-century mystery set in New Orleans.
February, 1841. It’s Carnival season in New Orleans. Free man of color Benjamin January – a surgeon turned piano player, with a talent for attracting trouble – is playing at an opulent masked ball when, little to his surprise, a quarrel breaks out between two guests, and his services are requested at a duel. Young planter Bastien Damoreau has accused a recent arrival to town of passing himself off as white – an insult not to be borne.
The duel results in the stranger’s death. But when January examines the body, he’s disturbed to realise that young Damoreau couldn’t possibly be the killer, as the dead man was shot from behind . . .
January knows it’s murder, but this is white people’s business, and calling attention to himself is not a risk he can afford to take. So when Detective Abishag Shaw asks if he’ll investigate, he declines – a decision he will later come to regret.
Murder in the Trembling Lands by NYT-bestselling author Barbara Hambly is the latest instalment of the critically acclaimed historical mystery series featuring “winning character” Benjamin January, who “nimbly mov[es] through parts of history we should all know better” (The New York Times)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hambly's sturdy latest historical mystery featuring Black pianist and physician Benjamin January (after The Nubian's Curse) combines a clever plot with a vivid evocation of mid-19th-century Louisiana. In 1841, January is performing at a masked ball in New Orleans when Bastien Damoreau, who is deep in debt, accuses Edouard-Georges Couvillier, a recent arrival from France, of being a Black man attempting to pass as white. Couvillier responds by challenging Damoreau to a duel, and January accepts a request to be one of the surgeons present at the skirmish, where he witnesses Damoreau shoot and kill Couvillier. However, January's subsequent examination of Couvillier's corpse reveals that the bullet that killed him came from behind, leading the doctor to suspect that Damoreau was perhaps hired to insult Couvillier and bait him into a fake duel that could serve as cover for a more personally motivated slaying. Initially reluctant to investigate further, January gets roped into the case anyway. As always, Hambly fully immerses readers in her humid historical setting, and January proves an astute, empathetic sleuth. This long-running series shows no signs of slowing down.
